Writers in the Storm

by Gwen Hernandez

If you've ever dropped your laptop, spilled water on it, or had a hard drive fail—raising my hand to all of these—you probably understand the value of having your work backed up.

Scrivener does this automatically for you, every time you close a project, but it's a good idea to give it a little more thought. For example, if your working project and its backup copy are both on your hard drive, the backup won't help you if your laptop goes up in flames or down into the pool.

However you choose to protect your writing (and other files), here's how to set things up in Scrivener.

Saving vs. Backing Up

I've encountered a lot of confusion over the difference between saving and backing up a file. In case you're unclear on the concepts, here's my attempt to explain.

Think of your working project file (the one you write in every day) like a piece of paper that you're writing on with a pencil. You can erase words and add new words, but all of those changes are saved onto that same piece of paper. (Scrivener saves your changes every two seconds that you're not typing or moving your mouse.) Every day when you sit down to write, you pull out that piece of paper and get to work.

If you were worried about your piece of paper getting eaten by the dog, blowing into the burning fireplace, or flying out the window, you might want a backup copy, just in case. In the analog world, you could make a photocopy of your piece of paper at the end of each day, and mail it to a friend or put it in a fireproof safe. This is equivalent to your backup copy in Scrivener. You'll probably never need it; it's just there in case something happens to your original.

Deciding Where to Save Your Backup Files

Now that we understand what backup files are, let's talk about where to keep them. It's best to store your Scrivener backups on a different drive from your working projects so that if something happens to one drive, the other is still safe.

If your working project file is on your hard drive, backup options include thumb drives, external hard drives, Dropbox, or other online storage such as iCloud.

NOTE: Cloud services other than Dropbox are not recommended for your working project because they don't handle Scrivener's file structure well. If your Desktop or Documents folder is linked to iCloud, you might want to keep working projects elsewhere. Any online storage service is fine for your backups, as long as they are compressed/zipped.

Understanding the Backup Settings in Scrivener

To view or adjust the Scrivener backup settings (applies to all projects on the computer), go to Scrivener>Preferences>Backup (Mac) or Tools>Options>Backup (PC).

The the box next to "Turn on automatic backups" should be checked. If not, automatic backups won't happen.

Deciding When to Perform a Backup

Your options for when the backup is created include on open, close, manual save (i.e., File>Save, which you rarely need to do since Scrivener auto-saves, as mentioned earlier), and before syncing with mobile devices.

"Back up on project close" is the most important one. It'll trigger a backup anytime you close your project or Scrivener.

The other choices are optional depending on your workflow.

Compressing the Backup Files

I strongly suggest choosing "Compress automatic backups as zip files." Yes, it's a bit slower, but zipping the files makes for smoother Internet transfers, and helps protect the backup project from corruption.

Choosing To Date or Not to Date

I also recommend you turn on "Use date in backup file names." This will insert a date and time stamp into the file name. If you ever need to open a backup file, the date makes it easier to find the one you want.

Deciding How Many Backup Copies to Keep

Your choice of how many copies you retain depends on how frequently you're backing up and how much space you have on the backup location.

Five copies is usually plenty, but if you open and close Scrivener multiple times a day, you may want more so you have several days' worth of backups.

Changing the Backup Location

To change the backup location, open the Backup settings window (as in Step 1 above) and click Choose.

Select the location where you'd like backups for all of your Scrivener projects to be saved. This must be a drive accessible via your computer. If you want to designate a flash drive or other external drive, it must be plugged in.

IMPORTANT: To avoid cross-contamination between file versions, Scrivener backups and working projects should never be saved in the same folder. If you do this, you'll get an error when you open your project file in Scrivener.

Recovering a Project from a Backup Copy

If you lose a project file to corruption, natural disaster, or user error, you can recover most of your work from a backup. Here's how.

1. The easiest way to find the backup file you need is to go to Scrivener>Preferences>Backup (Mac) or Tools>Options>Backup (PC), and click Open Backup Folder. This will open a window directly to the folder where your backups are currently being stored.

2. Backup files are called FileName.bak#.zip (where # is the version number or the date/time stamp), and will include the date/time stamp if you chose that optio. NOTE: The version numbers rotate from 1-5, so 5 may not always be the most recent (which is why I recommend date stamps). The very first backup file for a project will not include a version number.

3. To avoid losing the original backup file, right-click the file and choose Duplicate (Mac) or Copy (PC). A new version of the file with the word "copy" inserted at the end of the file name appears.

4. Move the copy to the folder where you keep your writing files. This will ensure you don't accidentally start working in the backup folder, which can cause problems with the other backup files. If you're restoring the file because the original was damaged (or you had made changes you can't undo), rename the original to something like OLD_filename.scriv to avoid confusion. (Windows users, be sure to rename the .scriv folder, not just the .scrivx file inside it.)

5. Mac users can double-click the backup file to unzip it. Depending on the size of the file and the speed of your computer, this might take several minutes.

6. Windows users can right-click and choose Extract All. In the Extract window, click in the text box and remove "filename.bak#" from the folder to extract to. If you don't do this, File Explorer saves the file within another folder inside your writing folder. Click Extract. Depending on the size of the file and the speed of your computer, this might take several minutes.

7. Once the file finishes unzipping, you'll have the backup version (.zip or .bak.zip), and the unzipped version of the file under the original project name (.scriv).

8. Now you can open the .scriv file in Scrivener and get back to work. (Windows users: Do not remove the .scrivx file from the .scriv folder. You need everything in the .scriv folder to stay together or you'll end up with your project structure and no content.)

What backup or other Scrivener questions do you have?

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About Gwen

Gwen Hernandez is the author of Scrivener For Dummies and helps authors all over the world find the joy in Scrivener through her online courses, in-person workshops, and private training. She also writes romantic suspense (Men of Steele series).   In her spare time she likes to travel, read, jog, flail on a yoga mat, and explore southern California, where she currently lives with her husband and a lazy golden retriever. You can find more information about Gwen at http://gwenhernandez.com/.

Got you at F-words, huh? That's okay. All these f-words are fine to use in whatever company you happen to be in right now. No one will wrinkle a brow once they get past the title, so there's no need to angle your screen or slouch and look over your shoulder.

In today's world of publishing, catching—and keeping—a reader's attention is rarely easy. Today I'm sharing six words to help you craft characters that no one would dub as "cardboard." Incorporate as many of these ideas as your story can handle, and you will also create backstory and plots that readers can identify and connect with, no matter the genre you write.

1. Failures: Whether it's in the past or the present, or looms in the immediate future, failure is a shared human experience. Whether it's the fear of future failure, the frightening effects failure can have on a character's life (can you imagine a lawyer's failed arguments that send an innocent client to Death Row?), or failure in the past that affects a characters belief system or perspective, failure has many degrees and always carries unseen ramifications.
2. Flaws: From minor to major character flaws, everyone can sympathize or form opinions of a character based on their flaws. When these flaws are skillfully revealed through backstory, dialogue, internal monologue or actions, we see the character dealing with their weaknesses. This gives us an opportunity for showing growth and character arcs, as well as the possibility for humorous plot situations because our protagonist tries to compensate for their shortcomings.
3. Frustrations: Plot twists, secondary characters, Mother Nature, past actions, relatives and friends—these can all have varying degrees of frustration. In a romance, frustration about the pace of growing feelings (too slow for one partner, too fast for the other) can provide many opportunities for revealing how your characters deal with adversity and other people or situations.
4. Firsts: We're rarely at our best the first time we try something. This is probably true for our characters, too. Remember the first time you put the car in gear and drove out of the garage or driveway onto the street? The first time you had to make a lane change or merge onto the freeway? Oh, maybe there was some…
5. Fear: I thought about putting this one first, but having a character who is always afraid isn't compelling. Having a strong, confident, successful character who has a debilitating fear of, say, spiders, could be interesting if we see that fear and the backstory gradually layered in to reveal the why of the fear. Then we see how someone used that fear to scare the helpless child, and how that fear grew into something bigger than just the fear of spiders. The determination to overcome the fear can bring a wealth of story ideas via secondary characters, action required to attain something of great importance, or character arc growth.
6. Funny: Even if you're writing a thriller, a funny detail or an expression can defuse a tense scene, relaxing characters for the next terror. A fun-filled memory can inform readers about another side of an otherwise staid character. Something that has the reader giggling, that the protagonist does not admit or recognize as funny, can be that much funnier and show us something about the character as well. And what about the place of a character who just wants to have fun, or the humorous side-kick? There is a big difference between a character who can laugh at herself versus one who refuses to acknowledge funny remarks.

Do you have an f-word that helps you write more compelling characters or stories? Please share it with us and tell us how you use it.

About Fae

Fae Rowen discovered the romance genre after years as a science fiction freak. Writing futuristics and medieval paranormals, she jokes that she can live anywhere but the present. As a mathematician, she knows life’s a lot more fun when you get to define your world and its rules. 

P.R.I.S.M., Fae's debut book, a young adult science fiction romance story of survival, betrayal, resolve, deceit, and love is now available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

by Lori Freeland

Avoid unlikeable main characters. Show don’t tell. Lock your character into character. Tell your story forward. Pass on passive verbs. Say bye-bye to backstory. Nix the omniscient narrator and dodge the dreaded head hop. Always remember adjectives are lazy, exclamation points are evil, and adverbs are from the devil. And for goodness sake, don’t forget to cover the mirror—main characters can’t ever describe themselves.

Those are just a few of the writing rules we’re taught to follow.  

Sometimes writing a story feels like stumbling through Dante’s Inferno. A lot of don’ts punctuated with a stern warning that you’ll be tossed into writer’s hell—an editor’s circular file—if you do.

Why the Rules?

People need rules. Otherwise life would be chaos. But like parents, we writers can drift away from the reasons behind the rules and take a because-I-said-so approach. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it feeds the chaos. Other times, it kills your creativity.

Let’s look at the real reason behind the writing rules. The key to hooking a reader’s attention is evoking emotion. In order to evoke emotion, you need a clear picture of what’s going on in the scene.  

Clarity Evokes Emotion  à  Emotion Hooks Readers

Readers need to understand what you’re writing. If they struggle to see the story, your message will get lost in translation. A few of us write for ourselves, but most of us write for other people. As storytellers, we want to create a mood, set a tone, mold a world. Often, we get so caught up in the excitement of sharing the magic unfolding in our heads that we forget a reader can only experience what we write.

Think about that for a minute. Not what we meant to write. Or wanted to write. Or should write. But what we actually write. The literal words we put on the page.

Clarity Outside and In

Paint the Outside of Your Scene

Before we dive into emotion, show us the physical, concrete aspects of the story. Think of this in movie terms.

• Where’s the location?
• What are the props?
• Who are the people?
• What are those people doing?

Close your eyes, conjure up that beautiful stage you’ve set . . . and write that down. Make sure you’ve given us a clear enough image that we see what you want us to see. This picture doesn’t have to be so detailed we get buried in the description. Sometimes less is more. If you say, “a crowd of teens at a mall,” we instantly get an illustration of both the place and the people. If you say nothing, we get unoccupied white space.

Paint the Inside of Your Scene

Think in terms beyond what your character wants to why she wants it. What’s her motivation? What’s she thinking? The internal journey of your character is as crucial as the external journey.

If you want us to know she struggles with intimacy because her mom abandoned her, you have to put it on the page. So many of my editing clients explain a character’s motivation to me after I question that character’s actions. Which is great. It then makes perfect sense. But when I ask them to point out where they’ve revealed that to the reader on the page, they can’t. It’s not there.

Writers, believe it or not, we can’t read your minds. Ridiculous, right? I mean, it would be so much easier if we could. But since we don’t live in a dystopian society where mindreading is as common as sleeping, that’s where the rules come in. They serve as a guide for clarity.

Why Not the Rules?

So . . . when do you use writing rules and when do you ditch them?

There’s a difference between being mysterious and being vague. I’ve had many writers tell me they don’t want to reveal everything upfront. Well, good. You shouldn’t. The unfolding of a story is part of what keeps your reader turning the pages.

But if John’s standing at the top of the stairs and he’s about to fall and break his legs, we first need to see him standing at the top of the stairs. That’s not a mystery. That’s what’s physically happening in the scene. The mystery could be why he’s there. Or who pushes him. As long as you hint that the why is important to the plot, and that it will eventually be revealed, we don’t need to know upfront.

If you break a rule, make it count. Make sure it works. Make sure you haven’t sacrificed clarity. In other words, do it right. Have a reason. A real reason.

Let’s go back to the rules I listed in the beginning and break them.

• Avoid Unlikeable Main Characters

Some of our favorite characters do bad things. Think Darth Vader in Star Wars, Voldemort in Harry Potter, Negan in The Walking Dead, and Joffrey in Game of Thrones. They’re evil. But they’re also interesting. And interesting evokes emotion.

Go ahead and write that unlikeable main character. But make us love to hate him. Or, even better, make us want to root for him. Slip in a redeeming quality or moment of weakness. Show a compelling motivation for otherwise reprehensible actions. Let someone we do like care about him.

• Show Don’t Tell

If you showed everything that happened in your book, you’d end up with 300,000 pages. When you need to keep moving forward, telling is okay. But understand that telling doesn’t usually evoke emotion. If you want something to be important to the reader, it needs to be important to the character and stand out. We want to see it, not hear about it. That’s where showing shines.

I love this quote from Mark Twain. “Don't tell us that the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.”

• Keep Your Character in Character

Your character can do anything you want—including act out of character—with the right motivation. That’s real life. A moral and upstanding citizen will commit a crime to save his family. A criminal will reform to have a family. Pushing your character out of his comfort zone creates conflict. And . . . you guessed it . . . conflict creates emotion.

• Tell Your Story Forward

Except if that isn’t the kind of story you’re telling. Do you have a dual past/present storyline like The Notebook? Do you open with the end and work back to the beginning like Memento? Do multiple characters each share the story from their point of view like Vantage Point? Use this technique on purpose as a device to frame your story. Don’t skip around just because.

• Pass on Passive Verbs

While strong verbs are usually best because they strengthen your writing, sometimes you just need to state something that’s not very important and move on. Other times, you want the action to be passive. Your description of the subtle, soft dripping of a faucet in the background won’t be loaded with power verbs.  

• Say Bye-Bye to Backstory.

We need backstory, just not in huge dumps that interrupt, slow the pacing, and pull us out of the present story. Get creative. Use previous events to draw us deeper into your character’s head. Show how the past impacts her feelings and her future.

Example: Up until today, I hadn’t said much about my sister’s Josh addiction. Not last summer, when she started lying to Dad. Not last fall, when she slid homework into the optional category. Not even last month, when she gave up being cheer captain.

• Nix the Omniscient Narrator and the Dreaded Head Hop

Gone are the times of a narrator looking down on the world and filling the reader in on what everyone was thinking. Readers want to be in the story. And the way they do that is to become your main character and experience his world. Omniscient narrators make that connection almost impossible.

In certain cases, like The Book Thief, it works. But use this technique for a reason. Does it build emotion? Add to the tension? Do we get a glimpse of a serial killer you want to keep in the shadows that has us jumping up to turn on all the lights?

• Adjectives are Lazy. Exclamation Points are Evil. Adverbs are From the Devil.

I kind of agree on this one but only because there are so many better ways to paint a word picture that strengthen rather than weaken your story. Adjectives can be helpful if you watch out for overload. Every so often, you might need an exclamation point as a quick way to show someone yelling. But keep in mind that if you emphasize everything, nothing will stand out. And yes, on the rare occasion, an adverb might be called for. Make it a great one.

• Cover the Mirror

Main characters can describe themselves if they do it right. We tend to think about ourselves in relation to the world around us. I think about my hair being blonde when it starts to go gray. I think about the clothes I’m wearing when they’re too tight. I think about my makeup when everyone I pass on the street stares. Go ahead. Put your character in front of a mirror. But make it a funhouse mirror that emphasizes her faults and grows them larger than life.

The Take-Away

Straying from the rules can take more skill than following them. Don’t accidentally break them, decide to break them. But before you do, think of them in terms of clarity and emotion.

Ask these three questions:

1. Is what’s going on in the scene still clear, or did you blur the visual too far outside the reader’s focus so they can’t see what’s physically happening?
2. Are you ramping up emotion or watering down your craft?
3. Does the integrity of the story hold, or are you manipulating it to fit your plot?

Thoughts on breaking the rules? Great examples? Share them in the comments.  

About Lori

An encourager at heart, author, editor, and writing coach Lori Freeland believes everyone has a story to tell. She holds a BA in psychology from the University of Wisconsin and currently lives in the Dallas area. She's presented multiple workshops at writer's conferences across the country and writes everything from non-fiction to short stories to novels—YA to adult. When she's not curled up with her husband drinking too much coffee and worrying about her kids, she loves to mess with the lives of the imaginary people living in her head. You can find Where You Belong, as well as her young adult and contemporary romance, at lorifreeland.com and her inspirational blog and writing tips at lafreeland.com. Her latest release, The Accidental Boyfriend, is currently up on the Radish app. Download the app for free. 

Lori Freeland Author/Editor/Writing Coach
lorifreeland.com (young adult website)
lafreeland.com  (inspirational blog)

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